Yesterday, I wrote a post about the fact that while the number of women small business owners hovers around 50 percent, the number of women founders of hi-tech start-ups is in the low single digits. I suggested that angel investors needed to wise up and realize that having women in the workplace is a key aspect of organizational performance.
As it happened, almost by accident, I saw the movie, The Social Network, last night. I was reluctant to go, as friends had already given me detailed accounts of every meaningful scene. I was thinking: “Do I really need to see this film? I already know the story.” Well, I was dragged along to see it and I was wrong. I did need to see the movie. Knowing the story is not enough. Experiencing it is something different. It is a terrifically well-done movie. Eye-opening.
Yet it’s an educational movie, rather than a likeable movie. Almost everyone in the film is either an a-hole or trying to become one. It’s a backstabbing frat-boy alpha-male ultra-jock culture. The computer-jocks are no different from the sports jocks—same moves, just a different ring of the circus.
As I suggested in yesterday’s post, the movie reflects the fact that the startup culture is an all-male workplace. The women that are there are there for diversionary purposes. They are not players in the real game.
In any event, what serious woman would want to work in such backstabbing frat-boy alpha-male ultra-jock culture?
The question asked by Vineet Nayar in 2005, when he began his transformational journey at HCL Technologies was ‘Is this the company that my children would want to work in?’ In his more recent thinking, It has evolved into ‘Is this the organization that my daughter will want to work in?’
Looking at the movie, The Social Network, the answer would be a resounding no.
For more on women and management:
I love what you are saying here, Steve. If we applied similar criteria in every area of business and life, we would see a quantum leap in performance and a new sense of opportunity among women.
I am trying hard, as a middle-aged man, who grew up, like you, in Australia, to ask is this how I would like my daughters, wife, mother, sister, or female friends to be treated?
The answer, even now, is almost always no. We take easy attitudes like "that is how the world is" or "women are just not assertive."
In my opinion, this is not always a male problem. Women have the same attitudes toward their own sex, and tolerate treatment of women that ranges from unfair to criminal. They talk about violence toward women, and its graphic depiction in books and movies, as though it is a grand old tradition, an inevitability.
Posted by: Graeme Roberts | December 05, 2010 at 02:01 PM